Education through the Lens of Virtual Reality

VR simulations in education enable a better understanding of the topic to a level that the knowledge can be applied even in real life.

FREMONT, CA: The journey of virtual reality (VR) applications began in gaming and media sector. With time, the technology has moved on to influence other areas such as healthcare, military, business, sports, and others. However, can it have something to offer in education too? Let’s find out.

Education is a vast subject where scholars and researchers have argued over the best techniques to improve the system and enhance the learning graph of the children. However, it is a widely accepted fact that a student grasps faster if the content is presented to him in an interesting way. The primary goal of VR in education is to do the same.

VR simulations enable a better understanding of the topic to a level that the knowledge can be applied even in real life. Another fact that supports the implementation of VR technology in education is that the brain tends to remember 10 percent of what it reads, 20 percent of what it listens, and 90 percent of what it does or simulates. Thus it’s imperative to move on to VR technology and its possible use cases in education.

As of now, VR is far from widespread implementation into education. Even though 97 percent of students are interested in learning some VR courses, only 23 percent of schools have tested the VR, while 10 percent are planning to incorporate it in the coming few years. As per the latest polls among the teachers, 68 percent are interested in VR to supplement the curriculum with better educational materials while 72 percent would like to have VR simulation to reproduce virtual experience related to course content.

The practical uses of VR in education can be categorized into two groups: workplace learning and school/university studying. Here are the primary VR based applications in education:

Visual Field Trips

With student rating infrastructure as the key priority in university education, it will be imperative to consider the prospect of using VR for college campuses tours that can enable the teenagers to decide upon their future university.

Aiding the Differently Abled

People with physical disabilities can gain significantly by exploring the world through a VR headset. Further, it can boost their education-related ambitions.

Content Creation

Though the VR courses are focused on science and history classes currently, it can be applied to include any subject or theme.